Page 26 - Studio International - October1973

EL LISSITZKY AND THE

JEWISH TRADITION

Alan C. Birnholz
`Those who really did most for the spiritual recently, true individuality and creativity. For
dignity of their people, who were great enough all his excellent Jewish work, Lissitzky
to transcend the bounds of nationality and to participated only in the first two periods; his
weave the strands of their Jewish genius into the mature 'individuality' surfaced only after he
general texture of European life, have been turned away from Jewish art.
given short shrift and perfunctory recognition.' 1 I believe that this interpretation of Lissitzky's
art is shortsighted. As I have briefly noted
Were he alive today, El Lissitzky (1890-1941) elsewhere, there can be no doubt that in style,
would disagree most vehemently with the the Jewish works shared much with the Proun
contentions of this article. As creator of the 'new compositions,8 and in meaning, certain Jewish
art' he called Proun, Lissitzky considered themes were favoured because they expressed
himself a modern, revolutionary, avant-garde so well his confident faith in the Revolution
artist who had successfully and completely which stood at the foundation of Proun.9 But Design of a lion in miniscule letters, German
broken with the past. He acknowledged working the impact of the Jewish tradition extends much manuscript of the thirteenth century. National
Library, Vienna
on Jewish themes only from 1917 to 1920, and deeper than I formerly recognized. That is, if
by the early twenties, he believed, his Jewish earlier I could analyze Lissitzky's career in Jews, and campaigned vigorously for the cause
past had yielded to an art relevant to all people terms of his allegiance to the twin masters of the of Jewish workers. There was similar progress
as they moved inexorably toward the fulfilment avant-garde movement and the Bolshevik in Jewish literature and in the Jewish theatre.
of world revolution and the communist utopia? Revolution,10 I must now add the third member Particularly important for Lissitzky, Jews now
Lissitzky argued this interpretation of his work to the Trinity he tried so hard to satisfy : the became deeply interested in their folk arts. The
so often throughout his life that it has been Jewish tradition. Jewish Ethnographic Society, established
unquestioningly accepted by art historians. Yet specifically to pursue this interest, encouraged
the frequency and intensity of these denials of I the collection of Jewish art objects, set up a
his past, as well as the nature of the works Throughout the formative years of his life museum of Jewish art in St Petersburg, and
themselves once we look at them closely, suggest Lissitzky was enveloped by Jewish culture and provided moral and financial support for young
that the Jewish tradition was a much more by the constant awareness of his Jewish origins. artists like Chagall and Lissitzky. 14
important factor in Lissitzky's career than he He was born in the Pale of Settlement in 1890, This activity 'testified to the great internal
cared to admit. the first-born son of a particularly devout diversity, as well as virility and creative vigour,
The commonly held interpretation of mother who compelled her husband to give up of the Russian [Jewish] community at the turn
Lissitzky is that although he was a major figure ideas of emigrating to America because the rabbi of the century.'15 This vitality grew with the
in the rebirth of Russian-Jewish art in the late disapproved." The threat and reality of rising tide of persecution the Jews faced at the
teens, the impact of modernism, and of pogroms intensified the youth's knowledge that same time. Virulent anti-Semitism ironically
Suprematism in particular, 'alienated' him away he was Jewish. Rejected by the Petersburg stimulated and encouraged the Jewish
from Jewish subjects and moved him toward the Academy in part for his inability to draw in the Renaissance. 'Paradoxical as it may seem, it was
Gegenstandslosigkeit, or 'non-objectivity', of required classicist style, in part for the precisely at this period — when the Jews were
Proun.3 Chimen Abramsky, for example, wrote limitations against the number of Jewish made to feel most sharply and insistently that
that the years devoted to Jewish themes, from students, Lissitzky decided to do what so many they were nothing but a pliant and helpless
1917 to 1922 (not 192o, as Lissitzky recalled), other young Russian Jews did in the early years object in the hands of history, that they could
`to an extent . . . are isolated from the rest of his of the century: he went to Germany.12 At the be dealt with arbitrarily, without respect and
artistic achievement' which was non-Jewish, if Darmstadt Technische Hochschule from 1910 consideration — that Russian Jewry, perhaps for
not anti-Jewish, in character. Never a devout to 1914 he came into contact not only with the first time in its long years of suffering, came
Jew, Lissitzky became 'restless', Abramsky advanced trends in art and architecture, but to conceive of itself as a subject rather than
goes on, with the limitations of the Jewish also with a thriving Jewish community and with object, as the shaper of its own destiny and its
tradition as he progressed toward a truly Jewish art.13 own future.'16 The Jews' nationalist ambitions
avant-garde art.4 Others have stressed the Thus wherever Lissitzky turned during these formed but one part of a growing nationalist
psychological trauma Lissitzky experienced in years he was reminded of his Jewish background. feeling that swept over many minority groups
rejecting his Jewish background.5 Such views This awareness was heightened by a rising in the Russian empire at the beginning of the
are not new. Writing in the Jewish cultural concern among Jews with their cultural heritage. 1900s.
journal Milgroim in 1923, Lissitzky's friend Known as the Jewish Renaissance, this After 1917 Lissitzky worked hard for the
Henryk Berlewi included him in a survey of movement began in the 187os and 188os as a cause of Jewish art. Like most Jews he welcomed
Jewish artists in contemporary Russian art, only result of the reforms of Alexander II. the overthrow of the Tsar as the end of the
to mention that Lissitzky had discarded the Succeeding decades witnessed the development torment of the pogroms. As Solzhenitsyn wrote
sentimentality of `Chagallism' in favour of the of specifically Jewish organizations in many in 'The First Circle', 'to a man, the Jews were in
`pure constructions' of Proun.6 In the fields. In labour, for example, the Society of favour of the Revolution that had rid them of
following year Boris Aronson came to a similar Social Democratic Jewish Workers in Russia, pogroms, of settlement restrictions.'17 'It is
conclusion.7 Modern Jewish artists in Russia, known as the Bund, was founded in 1897. This impossible,' one Jew stated at this time, 'to
Aronson declared, had gone through three main body, highly active before the Revolution, describe the exhilaration and the holiday
periods : mere copying of traditional objects, developed a Yiddish-language press, called for atmosphere in the Jewish world immediately
stylization and modernization, and, most cultural and national autonomy for Russian after the fall of Tsarism.'18 The Provisional

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